300

This frenetic, computerized gorefest bludgeons and butchers history, recasting the ancient Battle of Thermopylae fought between the mighty Persian Empire and an army of Greeks into a crude and uncomfortably racist romp. Sure, director Zach Snyder can justifiably say his movie is based on the Frank Miller comic book, not Herodotus or Xenophon, but tell that to the generation of American kids who’ll now forever associate Persians with hapless, degenerate sissy men.

The film makes the heroic Spartans — whose digitally enhanced abs ripple in the Hellenic half-light — into champions of freedom and democracy. This when Sparta was in reality one of the least free city-states in all of Greece and notorious for its exploitation and mistreatment of a vast population of slaves, known as Helots. Helot uprisings were a common feature of Spartan history. As for the Persians, 300 makes them out to be swarthy, spineless dissemblers. Their emperor is more campy circus freak than towering monarch; their habits are debauched and debasing. They seem to be able to defeat the noble, muscular Greeks only through deceitful schemes. Of course, this characterization is absurd. Generations of Persian rulers governed over a sprawling, cosmopolitan empire, which included many Greek cities. Some historians argue the Persian campaigns in the Greek peninsula were tantamount to that of a powerful state trying to subdue some rowdy hill-dwelling outliers — an exaggeration too, perhaps, but nowhere near as grotesque as the falsehoods given garish life by 300.

This movie really is terrible. I really wanted to like it, but how they treated the issue of slavery and the British soldiers was just BS. Having slaves (or in this case, "freed" men and women who just willingly work at the plantation) go about their work alongside Mel Gibson's character, smiling, and carefree is just such a slap to American history and to audiences, in general. It's like the director thought the audience was too stupid to know who the good guys and the bad guys were so he put both groups (American and British) in extremes. Rather than having Mel Gibson's character be seen as a vile character (through owning slaves, killing natives, and/or raping) who's also able to fight for what he loves (in this case family and country), we see a man who's essentially perfect and tragic. This isn't history Similarly, Jason Isaacs is an amazing actor, but painting him in 2-D light as a psychopath is just sad on the part of the writers and director. We don't know his drive or his motivation or what he gets in his sadistic ways, and he's honestly just used to twist his invisible Machiavellian mustache.

Maybe the Brits didn't burnt civilians alive in the American independence war, but it is historically proved that they invented concentration camps during the Boers campaign among other atrocities against both white and black South Africans.

The first modern concentration camps were created in 1838, in the USA At this time, the United States government, led by President Van Buren, decided to remove the native Cherokee population from their lands and place them all in concentration camps.

This was over 50 years before the Boer War. But don't let the facts get in the way of your spite against the British.

@Mark3532 The Aztecs used concentration camps to hold their captives before they carved out their hearts and sacrificed them to their blood gods. This could just go round and round. There are heroes and villains on both sides of almost any war.

I like how the author of the article would rather see a Robin Hood which advocates for the redistribution of wealth as opposed to a Robin Hood who advocates liberty and freedom. Okay, I am being sarcastic, as I would much rather support liberty over socialistic agendas. At the very least, thank you for having the intellectual honesty to distinguish the difference between the two concepts, for they are separate and unable to coincide.

The movie is actually based on the Orion theory and other emerging new evidence about the long forgotten history of mankind. It's a daring movie that challenges the status quo and an invitation for open minded people to dare to question the history of mankind. One of the best movies if not the best.